I made these adorable DIY mini Korok figurines and matching earrings all at once with super simple materials! I’ll show you everything you need to craft them at home, too, or you can buy them here on my Etsy shop. These are based on the Koroks from Breath of the Wild (and the earrings are shaped like the Korok Frond item) and fit perfectly in a cute mini gift set for Legend of Zelda fans.

1. Materials

Here are the materials you need to make this on your own!

• Cricut Cutting Machine (optional but highly recommended)
• Shrinky Dinks or any other shrink plastic sheets (I used the frosted white sheets but clear sheets could also work!)
• Polymer Clay (I use Sculpey)

2. Making the Korok Leaves

I used my Cricut Maker on a custom setting to cut Shrinky Dinks (or any craft shrink plastic) to make perfectly-sized matching Korok leaves for the earrings and the leaf mask/face of the Korok figure. This ensured that all the edges and details matched perfectly (unlike cutting them out by hand).

My custom Cricut settings for Shrinky Dinks:
Cut Pressure: 300
Multi-Cut: 2x
Blade Type: Fine Point Blade

For small earrings that shrink down to about half an inch, I cut out 1.6″ leaves from the shrink plastic with 0.22″ holes at the top. For slightly larger earrings that shrink down to about 0.8 inches after baking, I cut out some 2″ leaves with holes for earrings that were about 0.25 inches across. Shrinky Dinks usually shrink to about a third of their original size, but this can vary. I personally like these two sizes the most, but you can experiment with different sizes if you’d like!

I also used the 2″ shrink plastic leaves without the earring holes to make the Korok’s leaf mask/face then super glued it onto the clay after baking.

Follow the directions to bake the shrink plastic and paint it with glossy Acrylic paint after.

3. Making the Clay Korok Figure

This part was super easy – I just took a small ball of polymer clay, rolled it to be roughly the proportions I wanted for the Korok’s body, then pinched the clay to form stubs for the feet, arms, and twigs on its head. You can just leave the face area empty and flat – the Korok body should be a super simple shape and we’ll be gluing the face on later.
I then took a very tiny piece and rolled it out to form a small carrot-shaped nose, then used a knife to cut the base end flat so I could glue it onto the leaf face. I put everything on a baking sheet and smoothed it all out with rubbing alcohol and a paint brush. After all your pieces are ready, bake them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at 275º (or whatever is recommended for your polymer clay brand).

Take the clay base out of the oven and paint it wood-brown, tan, or whatever foresty color you want your Korok to be. Then mix a bit of white with your main color to create lighter highlights and add simple streaks after the first layer has dried.

Once I had painted the clay and Korok Leaf shrink plastic, I super glued the plastic leaf face onto the clay body. Then I super glued the little carrot-shaped clay nose onto the leaf.

4. Korok Frond Earrings

Now that your Shrinky Dinks are baked and cooled, paint the earring pieces with mossy shades of gloss acrylic paint. Once the base layers dry, I added a gradient of gold paint to the points of the leaves. It didn’t seem quite gold enough at first though, so I also added some gold flake nail polish over the gold areas to add an extra layer of sparkle.

I covered everything in gloss Mod Podge to seal it and make it shine. I am interested in trying UV resin to create an even glossier finish in the future, but this was already super glossy and looked good to me.

Now you have an adorable mini Korok gift set for either you or friends/family who love Legend of Zelda! And again, these are available to purchase on my Etsy page in case you don’t want to get the materials and make them yourself. I’m also planning on adding seasonal fall-colored Korok variations soon!

Thanks for reading and happy crafting!